“Quite a Manor house, I see, you have in mind!” she replied in an unpleasant tone. “Better dwell in one’s own hovel than live in another man’s house.” “Ploshka’s wife desires us to spend the winter with her: she has offered us a room with a willing heart.” “A willing heart!—Willing, I know, to do anything to spite my mother, with whom she is always at odds.—Fear nothing, Nastka; I’ll build you a hut, with window and fire-place all that is needful. You shall see: in three weeks from now, had I to work my arms to the stumps, it shall stand there, like Amen at the end of ‘Our Father’: yes, stand it shall.” “And, of course, you’ll have to work by yourself?” “Matthew will help: he has promised.” “Would not your mother,” she faltered, “come in any way to your aid?” “I would die rather than ask her!” he burst out; but at once, seeing how dejected she looked, he felt sorry and, sitting down at her side by a rye-field, stammered an explanation. “How can I, Nastka? Me she has thrust out, and you she loads with curses!” “But, good God! if she would but let us have one cow! We are like the very lowest of _Dziads_: with naught in the world! ’Tis fearful to think of.” “But, Nastka, there will be a cow: I have one already in mind.” “No hut ... no cattle ... nothing whatsoever!” she wailed, with her head upon his bosom, while he wiped her eyes and stroked her hair. All the time, he felt so sad that it was a wonder he himself could keep back his tears.—All at once he seized his spade, sprang to his feet, and cried in feigned anger: “Woman, fear God! There’s so much work to do—and you do nothing—only complain!” She, sorely troubled, rose with him, but care was gnawing at her heart, and made her say: “Even should we not quite starve, the wolves will eat us in this wilderness.” This time, he felt seriously angry. Turning away to work, he threw her these sharp words: “Better stay at home than come here to talk nonsense and whimper!” She wanted to appease him, but he pushed her away. “Dear Lord!” he thought. “Indeed, a woman is of the some blood with a man; but she hath not reason such as a man hath. Wealth falls from heaven, not by lamenting and wailing, but by working with our hands.—They are all like children, now weeping, now laughing, or drooping, or full of malice.—Dear Lord!” He went on grumbling thus, till his work had absorbed him so that he forgot all else on earth. And so things went with him day by day. He would rise at grey dawn, and go home late in the evening, and many was the day when he exchanged no word with any living soul. Teresa or someone else now brought him his meals; for Nastka was working at the priest’s potato-field. People came to see how he worked; but at a distance, for he disliked talking. His unwearied activity made them wonder. “There’s plenty of grit in the fellow: who’d have thought it?” Klemba grunted.